Received Wisdom Kernels Of Truth And Boundary Conditions In Organizational Studies

This volume of the Research in Organizational Sciences is entitled “Received Wisdom, Kernels of Truth, and Boundary Conditions in Organizational Studies”. Received wisdom is knowledge imparted to people by others and is based on authority and tenacity as sources of human knowledge. Authority refers to the acceptance of knowledge as truth because of the position and credibility of the knowledge source. Tenacity refers to the continued presentation of a particular bit of information by a source until this bit of information is accepted as true by receivers. The problem for organizational studies, however, is that this received wisdom often becomes unquestioned assumptions which guide interpretation of the world and decisions made about the world. Received wisdom, therefore, may lead to organizational practices which provide little or no benefit to the organization and, potentially, negative organizational effects, because this received wisdom is no longer valid. The 14 papers in this volume all, in some way, strive to question received wisdom and present alternatives which expand our understanding of organizational behavior in some way. The chapters in this volume each strive to present new ways of understanding organizational constructs, and in so doing reveal how received wisdom has often led to confirmation bias in organizational science. The knowledge that some perceived truths are actually the products of received wisdom and do not stand up to close scrutiny shakes up things within research areas previously thought settled allowing new perspectives on organizational science to emerge.

This Research in Organizational Sciences volume to explore and question the received wisdom of organizational sciences. The chapters in this volume (and the companion volume) seek to establish boundary conditions for important organizational constructs and processes. They illustrate the importance of context for interpreting the received wisdom of organizational science by showing when constructs must be adapted to changing circumstances. The volume begins with four chapters looking at the construct of leadership. Each of these addresses an important aspect of our understanding of leadership and its practice. The four chapters on leadership are followed by five chapters dealing with other organizational processes including motivation, organizational change, the role of diversity in organizations and organizational citizenship. The last three chapters deal with the issue of knowledge in large systems. Two chapters address how information may be transmitted across organizations and generations of workers. The final chapter deals with the use of information by organizational decision-makers. The 12 papers in this volume all, in some way question received wisdom and present alternatives which expand our understanding of organizational behavior. These chapters each strive to present new ways of understanding organizational constructs, and in so doing reveal how received wisdom does not always lead to best practice in research or application. It is our hope that these chapters illustrate how challenging received wisdom in organizational studies can provide new ways of thinking about organizational processes. These new ways of thinking in turn can provide better understanding of the processes necessary to increase organizational effectiveness.

The second edition of this best-selling Handbook presents a fully updated and expanded overview of research, providing the latest perspectives on the analysis of theories, techniques, and methods used by industrial, work, and organizational psychologists. Building on the strengths of the first edition, key additions to this edition include in-depth historical chapter overviews of professional contexts across the globe, along with new chapters on strategic human resource management; corporate social responsibility; diversity, stress, emotions and mindfulness in the workplace; environmental sustainability at work; aging workforces, among many others. Providing a truly global approach and authoritative overview, this three-volume Handbook is an indispensable resource and essential reading for professionals, researchers and students in the field. Volume One: Personnel Psychology and Employee Performance Volume Two: Organizational Psychology Volume Three: Managerial Psychology and Organizational Approaches

The second volume in the SAGE Handbook of Industrial, Organizational and Work Psychology looks in detail at how teams and individuals function and perform. It covers motivation and organizational socialisation as well as the latest research into diversity and organizational culture in the workplace. There are also sections on social networks and how job loss and the experience of unemployment can affect individuals and wider groups within organizations. Part One: Lenses Part Two: Social and Political Order Part Three: Legacies Part Four: Problems and Problematics

Data, Methods and Theory in the Organizational Sciences explores the long-term evolution and changing relationships between data, methods, and theory in the organizational sciences. In the last 50 years, theory has come to dominate research and scholarship in these fields, yet the emergence of big data, as well as the increasing use of archival data sets and meta-analytic methods to test empirical hypotheses, has upset this order. This volume examines the evolving relationship between data, methods, and theory and suggests new ways of thinking about the role of each in the development and presentation of research in organizations. This volume utilizes the latest thinking from experts in a wide range of fields on the topics of data, methods, and theory and uses this knowledge to explore the ways in which behavior in organizations has been studied. This volume also argues that the current focus on theory is both unhealthy for the field and unsustainable, and it provides more successful ways theory can be used to support and structure research, and demonstrates the most effective techniques for analyzing and making sense of data. This is an essential resource for researchers, professionals, and educators who are looking to rethink their current approaches to research, and who are interested in creating more useful and more interpretable research in the organizational sciences.

Individual differences represent one of the oldest research areas within psychology and serve as the 'nature' component critical for understanding human behaviour. This domain's constructs have long been applied in organizational spheres, including organizational behaviour, organizational psychology, managerial psychology, personnel psychology, leadership, and management. As a result, there exists a vast body of literature exploring the role of individual differences in organizational settings. The Oxford Handbook of Individual Differences in Organizational Contexts reviews the individual differences, paying attention both to psychological differences (e.g., personality traits, dark personality traits, intelligence types, self-monitoring, chronic regulatory focus) and biological/physiological differences (e.g., sex, age, facial morphology, genetic differences, neurological differences). In doing so, it serves two purposes. First, it aims to help decrease fragmentation in the field, and facilitate discussions among different streams of research within this literature. Secondly, it aims to render this literature more accessible to academics and students wishing to deepen their understanding of individual differences. Comprising twenty-six chapters authored by fifty-seven esteemed academics, this book facilitates readers in comprehending the key findings, questions, and future research areas of individual differences research in organizational contexts. This book can be of interest also to practitioners that need a deep understanding of individual differences, such as HR managers and recruiters.

Empirical research in HRM has focused on such issues as recruiting, testing, selection, training, motivation, compensation, and employee well-being. A review of the literature on these and other topics suggests that less than optimal methods have often been used in many HRM studies. Among the methods-related problems are using (a) measures or manipulations that have little or no construct validity, (b) samples of units (e.g., participants, organizations) that bear little or no correspondence to target populations, (c) research designs that have little or no potential for supporting valid causal inferences, (d) samples that are too small to provide for adequate statistical power, and (e) data analytic strategies that are inappropriate for the issues addressed by a study. As a result, our understanding of various HRM phenomena has suffered and improved methods may serve to enhance both the science and practice of HRM. In view of the above, the purpose of this volume of Research in Human Resource Management is to provide basic and applied researchers with resources that will enable them to improve the internal validity, external validity, construct validity, and statistical conclusion validity of research in HRM and the related fields of industrial and organizational psychology, and organizational behavior. Sound research in these fields should serve to improve both science and practice. With respect to science, support for a theory hinges on the validity of research used to support it. In addition, the results of valid research are essential for the development and implementation of HRM policies and practices. In the interest of promoting valid research-based inferences in HRM research, the chapters in this volume identify a wide range of methods-related problems and offer recommendations for dealing with them. Chapters in it address such HRM research-related topics as neglected research issues, causal inferences in research, heteroscedasticity in research, range restriction in research, interrater agreement indices, and construct validity issues in measures of such constructs as job performance, organizational politics, and safety climate.

This cutting-edge Research Handbook brings together international scholars to provide a comprehensive overview of motivation within and beyond the field of public administration. Discussing the implications of contemporary research for theory and practice, it offers suggestions for the development of future research in the field.